Patient Group Minutes of Meeting, Reports and Surveys

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PPG Minutes: 8th January 2024

Attendees

• Paul Underwood – Chair
• Pam Jones – Vice-Chair/Secretary
• Peter Curtis
• David Porteious
• Jas Bhari – GP Partner
• Aija Selby – Practice Manager
• Plus members x 9 

Apologies 

• Eric Hitchcock

1. Minutes of previous meeting

Agreed via email

2. Matters arising from minutes 

None noted

3. Speaker - Laura Willis, Occupational Therapist (OT)

Laura overviewed the wide remit of Occupational Therapists. It is a science based health and social based profession. They are trained in mental and physical health. “Medicine can add days to your life, Occupational Therapy can add life to your days!” Occupation isn’t just about work, it is about what we do in day to day life, from being able to wash, to make refreshments and achieve what we can. Injury, frailty and disability can all lead to need for an OT.

They are able to offer a holistic approach/.assessment as it is common that if issues are identified in one area invariably there are problems in other aspects of life too. The act of making a cup of tea was given as an example, where issues can involve balance, reaching, cognitive to remember what they were doing/making etc. 

Accessing an OT – Social Services OT’s work involves moving and handling, assessing for equipment and home adaptations to increase independence. You can self-refer to Social Services/Council for this service. 

Laura’s role is new and she has been commissioned by the PCN (Primary Care Network) to particularly focus on frailty, although this may evolve over time and there is hope that she can ultimately be joined by additional team members. Laura has extensive experience in the community, particularly with frailty, falls, long Covid and anxiety.

Laura covers surgery case loads from practices in Yaxley, Wansford, Old Fletton and Queen St Stanground. Most of her work is in Care Homes, working with Doctor’s rounds to identify patients who are at falls risks and to enhance quality of life. 
Laura receives referrals from GPs who have identified a need for her services.

Patients of Lakeside at Yaxley still have all the same access to other OT services as referenced above, such as via Social Services and through discharge planning, so her role is an excellent and much needed addition.

5. Dr Jas Bhari, the role of the Advanced Nurse Practitioner & practice Paramedic

Dr Bhari explained that historically the clinical team used to be Nurses and Doctors, however over time this has widened tremendously to a Multi-Disciplinary Team, some roles of which we have had speak at previous meetings, such as Social Prescriber and Care Co-Ordinator.

The Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP), Nurse Practitioners (NP), Emergency Care Practitioner (ECP) and Physician Associates (PA) have different backgrounds and bring strong expertise from their relevant fields.

• ANP/NP have progressed through the nursing educational pathway, predominantly have a hospital background usually with a specialism (e.g. respiratory or cardiology) and are often able to also prescribe medication.
• ECP invariably have a paramedic background, are very experienced in emergency care type situations and also often are prescribers. 
• PA have a similar background to medical students.

All of the above have undergone additional training so are experts in their field. As Dr Bhari stated, if she had a condition such as asthma, she would prefer to be seen by a specialist nurse in that field, who has had the opportunity to keep up with all the latest treatments and research for that condition. A GP doesn’t see anywhere near the volume or frequency of long term conditions that a specialist nurse does. 

All of these roles and the wider Nursing Team are supervised every day and can call upon the Supervising GP, if an additional opinion is needed. There is also a daily team case studies meeting held, where specific complex cases are discussed to draw upon the team expertise for best patient outcome.

6. Items for discussion / correspondence

Questions from patients

• Q&A document has been posted on FB page and hard copy on PPG noticeboard in corridor of the Practice.

Facebook Group

• Continues to receive questions and comments, most of which are positive about the practice. PPG email address brought to group’s attention and is only viewed by Chair and Vice-Chair who can signpost appropriately. The group were reminded that this is not for clinical queries. 

Recycle project

• a patient referred on FB page about how hard it is to recycle medication blister packs. Paul & Pam have been researching this and the issue revolves around the mixed nature of the packs. Different plastics, and metal are used and there is currently no consistency around this making recycling very expensive. 
  • Superdrug used to recycle these, however it became too costly so our nearest store that continues to take blister packs is Ashford in Kent, 92 miles away! 
  • Boots have a pilot with a small number of pharmacies in Central London. 
  • Terracyle do offer recycling, but the boxes are £96 each, taking approx. 1,000 blister packs. 
  • Pam has emailed our local M.P. Shailesh Vara asking what Government were doing to put pressure on pharmaceutical manufacturers to consider sustainability of their products and what pressure is also being placed to encourage recycling schemes. We are also looking at ways of encouraging schools to be involved with collection of used blister packs, perhaps via a non uniform day fundraising etc.Pam has received a response from Parliamentary Assistant to Sailesh Vara who has been asked by Shailesh to seek our permission to escalate this to the Secretary of State to Dept of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. We will keep the group updated on progress. 

Update on fundraising

• the PPG have received a very generous donation of £100 from Caroline, who heard about the fundraising for the 24 hour ECG monitor machine and wanted to contribute, thankyou to Caroline for this wonderful gift. We are almost at our goal to purchase not one, but two monitors. Our local specialist mobility transport service Passenger Assist, run by Mohammed Bashir have been holding a collection in the run up to Christmas and are planning to continue to do so on an 8 weekly basis. They are hoping to complete our fundraising for this key second monitor. The PPG sends Mr Bashir a heartfelt thankyou and very best wishes for a speedy recovery as he is currently in hospital. 

Practice reports / update

• Aija Selby overviewed the following statistics. It was highlighted that there was an IT error in some of the national data which has resulted in her only being able to reference up to November 2023, however the data is still very relevant. Across all of the Lakeside practices, the practice that uses Doctrin the most is Yaxley. 
  • Yaxley have 7 GP Partners, 4 salaried GP’s and 3 Registrars at present. 

Usage of the NHS app

• 60% of the practice population aged over 13 have registered and access the NHS app, with almost 10,000 patients already using it.
• This led to discussions around the move from Doctrin to Anima.

National Appointment Data (GPAD data)

• 2021
  • Total number of appointments: 168,729
  • Appointments per 1000 patients: 8,596
• 2022
  • Total number of appointments: 183,325 - 9% increase
  • Appointments per 1000 patients: 9,340 - 9% increase
• 2023 (incomplete data up to mid-November)
  • Total number of appointments: 200,715 - 9% increase
  • Appointments per 1000 patients: 10,226 - 9% increase

Doctrin Usage (2 years)

• Lakeside Healthcare Group - Total number of cases: 183,031 - 125,858,69% Other Lakeside practices
• Lakeside Healthcare at Yaxley - Total number of cases: 57,173 - 57,173,31% Yaxley

Current NHS App (Data from National Portal)

• 60% of GP patients 13+ registered for the NHS  App
• Monthly Logins: 3,945 (down by 24%)
• Repeat Prescriptions Ordered: 413 (up by 2%)

Anima

Anima will be replacing Doctrin. Doctrin will be closed down on evening of Monday January 29th and Anima will go live on Wednesday 31st January. This will allow the Practice to action any open cases.

Patients have been encouraged to register with Anima in preparation for the go live. Majority are registering with their NHS app login as this is the quickest way to do so, but registration with a unique email address is also possible. Over 900 patients have already registered for Anima.

There were questions around those not very computer savvy and they were reminded that it was all about choice, so those, who like to use online systems can use Anima, whilst those, who prefer not to, can still use the telephone or visit the Practice in person.
Paul and Pam said they would be offering walk in sessions to assist patients with accessing Anima once it is live, which was well received. 

6. Any other business 

• There was one question around the NHS app and accessing own medical records.
  • Aija confirmed access to prospective records can be requested via form on the website: Patient Online Access
  • For access to full historic electronic records completion of a more extensive form is required. Patients can collect copy of the form from the Reception or contact Clinical Administration Team, who will be able to email or post the form to the patient. Also, please note historic paper notes may have not been fully digitalised as yet.

Next Meeting

Next meeting is on the 8th April 2024 at 6:30pm Lakeside at Yaxley reception area. 

Meeting closed at 7:40pm